You Gotta Know These Quintuples

“The Waste Land”: The five parts of T. S. Eliot’s 1922 masterpiece “The Waste Land” are “The Burial of the Dead,”“A Game of Chess,”“The Fire Sermon,”“Death By Water,” and “What the Thunder Said.”

Mitosis: The five stages of the biological process mitosis (the production of new body cells from existing ones) are interphase, prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase. Interphase is not technically a part of mitosis, though it is often discussed at the same time.

Nobel Prize Winners: The five original winners of Nobel Prizes (1901) were Wilhelm Röntgen (physics, for the discovery of X rays), Jacobus Henricus van ’t Hoff (chemistry, for laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure), Emil Adolf von Behring (physiology or medicine, for his serum-therapy remedy for diphtheria), Sully Prudhomme (literature, for his idealistic poetry), and Henri Dunant and Frédéric Passy (peace, for founding the International Red Cross and the first French peace society, respectively).

D-Day: The codenames for the five beaches attacked in Operation Overlord on D-Day are Gold, Juno, Sword, Utah, and Omaha. The first three were attacked by British and Canadian forces while the latter two were assaulted by American troops.

Orders of Architecture: There are five classical “orders of architecture,” a term that primarily refers to the design of the columns used in the building. They are the Doric (simple, used for the Parthenon), Ionic (fancier, fluted with scrolls on their capitals), Corinthian (baroque, fluted with acanthus-like leaves for capitals), Tuscan (plain, similar to Doric), and Composite (mixture of Ionic and Corinthian). The latter two orders are Roman developments, the other three originated with the Greeks.

Cooperstown: The first five members elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame were Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson. They were inducted in 1936.

Spectral Lines: Hydrogen produces an infinite series of spectral lines. The first five of those series are named after scientists who observed them before it was known that they were examples of the same phenomenon. From lowest to highest energy of the final level, they are known as the Lyman, Balmer, Paschen, Brackett, and Pfund series. Only the Balmer series exists in the visible spectrum.

Pillars of Islam: Islam has five fundamental tenets of religious life, a group known as the Pillars of Islam. They are the declaration of faith (Shahadah), prayer (Salat), giving charity to those in need (Zakat), fasting during the month Ramadan (Sawm), and the pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) to be performed once in each adherent’s lifetime.

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